Review: Bergman Island

Image courtesy of IFC Films.

Mia Hansen-Love's latest film is an engrossing drama that includes a film within a film and focuses on the creative process and how our surroundings influence us. Its two lead characters — at least, in one of its two stories — are filmmakers in the middle of creating new projects, but "Bergman Island" is not one of those films about movie-making that seem to appeal only to people in the film industry.

The title refers to Faro, an island in Sweden where the legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman became obsessed with its geography and eventually lived there, shooting several of his films — including "Shame" and "Through a Glass, Darkly" — on the island. At the film's beginning, a director named Tony (Tim Roth) and his girlfriend, Chris (Vicky Krieps), also a filmmaker, arrive on the island. He's there for inspiration, as Bergman is one of his favorite directors, but also to take part in a Bergman festival, where one of Tony's latest films will screen with a Q&A to follow.

Chris, on the other hand, has the bare bones of a story in mind, and seemingly a personal one. Oddly enough, little is made of this story until about halfway through the film when she decides to relay the story to Tony to get his feedback. 

It should be noted that as she tells her story — which may or may not have anything to do with Chris's own life, or her relationship with Tony — her beau is occasionally interrupted by phone calls, breaking off her story. Meanwhile, Chris stands Tony up when he attends the "Bergman Safari," a tour of the island's locations where Bergman shot his films that, apparently, is an actual thing. 

Anyway, Chris's film concept revolves around a young woman named Amy (Mia Wasikowska) who has had a longstanding on-again-off-again relationship with a man she's known since her youth named Joseph (Anders Danielsen Lie). The two of them bump into each other during a wedding being held by a mutual friend on Faro. At first they resist, but eventually rekindle their romance — at least the sex part — despite his having a girlfriend elsewhere and she having a child and, possibly, a significant other.

Among the more interesting aspects of "Bergman Island" are the sequences during which Tony and Chris explore the island, occasionally together, but just as often separately — he takes the Bergman Safari, while she finds a young man to show her around the island. These scenes also explore the creative process and how locations can inspire or mold our perceptions — for example, how Tony finds inspiration in visiting locales where one of his heroes made movies, while Chris tries to find an ending for her own story, using the island as a location where she envisions it taking place.

It's also interesting to note that conversations about Bergman films take place between Tony and Chris throughout the film, but it wasn't until after I watched it that I realized that, much like Bergman's "Persona," two women trade places during the course of the film — Chris's story becomes her telling of the film-within-a-film, which stars Amy. They may not swap places in the manner of the two women in Bergman's film, but one takes over for the other as the film's lead character, for a time at least.

The film ends a bit abruptly, but it's an otherwise deceptively simple, but engaging picture that ranks highly — for me, at least — among Hansen-Love's solid filmography. Roth's character may be more in a minor key, but Krieps is able to developer her character in an interesting way. With roles like this one and her stellar work in "Phantom Thread," she continues to prove to be an actress who's often fascinating to watch. "Bergman Island" is a showcase for her talents, but also those of Hansen-Love, who tells stories about human relationships with aplomb.